Around 13 Queensland agriculture workers die each year as a result of a workplace incident and 1700 are injured. Having a safe and healthy business isn’t just a legal requirement, it makes good business sense. Not only can it minimise injuries and their associated costs but it can also reduce absentee rates, boost worker productivity and morale, and enhance your business’ reputation. Achieving a safe and health workplace requires a planned approach. To help guide you, Workplace Health and Safety Queensland has developed a useful online tool. The Queensland Agriculture Workforce Network’s (QAWN) officer for South East Queensland, Michelle Templin, outlines five things that you need to know about it.
- The online tool is known as the Organisational Systems Benchmarking tool and it enables you to assess whether or not you have an effective approach to managing work health and safety, worker health and wellbeing, workers’ compensation and return to work.
- It is free and confidential and should only take you between 20–30 minutes to complete. All you need to do is register as a user, select which aspects of your business you’d like to assess, then begin a survey.
- If you don’t complete a survey you can save it at any time and revisit it at a later stage. Using a secure confidential login, you can add future any new initiatives that you have implemented, allowing you to reassess your progress.
- Upon completion, you will be provided with a report that identifies the strengths and weaknesses of your safety, worker health and well-being, rehabilitation and return to work practices, and guidance on ways to make improvements. The report will also compare your performance anonymously with other businesses across similar industry sectors and sizes.
- The tool can be found at https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/medical/resources/organisational-systems-benchmarking-tool
To begin the survey, click on the link above and find out whether your workplace is safe.